If your digital images are only ever seen on a tiny LCD screen and your prints are locked inside a dusty album, unleash them with these cutting-edge modes of display - from coffee-table books to, er, coffee tables.

Although Picasa and iPhoto work on the image as a whole, in Photoshop and Elements it is possible to make selections of individual objects or people within a scene, and then turn them into separate layers.

When you catch the photography bug, the next big step is buying a DSLR (or digital single-lens reflex) camera. This wonderful piece of kit can really stretch your imagination to the limit - but, like most creative geniuses, it also takes time to get to know. Here's a basic introduction.

Early computer graphics programs featured a "rubber stamp" tool, which was capable of painting patterns rather than just a single colour. This has now evolved into the Clone tool, which still uses a rubber stamp as its icon in homage to its early beginnings.

Magnum photographer and co-founder of the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, Martine Franck maintains the joy of photographing in black and white is that it allows you to concentrate on an image's most rewarding aspects - such as composition, shape, texture and expression. 'It should,' she says, 'be perceived as a release from the distraction of colour...'